ARES Scholarship Programme

ARES stands for Académie de Recherche et d'Enseignement supérieur — the umbrella body that coordinates higher education and research across all French-speaking universities and colleges in Belgium. When people talk about "the Belgian government scholarship," they are usually referring to either ARES (for the Francophone side) or VLIR-UOS (for the Flemish side). These are two entirely separate systems with different application platforms, different deadlines, different eligibility rules, and different host universities. This page is about ARES only.

Through its development cooperation division, ARES offers approximately 200 fully funded scholarships per year to students and professionals from developing countries. That breaks down to roughly 130 degree scholarships (specialized bachelor's and master's programmes) and about 70 continuing education scholarships (shorter training courses lasting two to six months). These numbers fluctuate slightly year to year depending on Belgian federal funding, but the ballpark has held steady.

The philosophy behind ARES scholarships is specific and worth understanding: the goal is to create "agents of change." ARES is not simply looking for bright students who want a European degree. They want people who are already working in development-relevant fields in their home countries, who will use the training in Belgium to become more effective at solving problems back home, and who will return after their studies. This return requirement is not symbolic. ARES scholarship holders sign an undertaking to go back to their country of origin. If you are looking for a pathway to emigrate to Europe, this is the wrong scholarship.

ARES programmes are hosted across the major French-speaking Belgian institutions: UCLouvain, ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles), ULiège, UNamur, EPHEC, ESA Saint-Luc, and HE Vinci, among others. This means your study life will be in Wallonia or Brussels — the French-speaking regions of Belgium. If you were picturing yourself in Ghent, Leuven, or Antwerp, those are Flemish cities and fall under VLIR-UOS instead. The geographic and linguistic divide in Belgium is real, and it shapes everything about these scholarships.

The majority of ARES programmes are taught entirely in French. The application materials say candidates must demonstrate "proficient mastery of written and spoken French." This is not a soft recommendation. If you cannot follow university-level lectures in French, write academic papers in French, and participate in group work in French, you will struggle badly — and the selection committee knows that.

What makes this tricky is that ARES does not universally require a standardized French test like DELF or DALF. Some individual programmes may ask for it, but there is no across-the-board requirement for a specific certificate with a minimum score. Instead, your French proficiency is assessed through your application materials themselves — your motivation letter, your pre-project, your interview performance (if called). If those are written or conducted in broken French, that tells the panel everything they need to know.

There are exceptions. A small number of continuing training courses accept English-speaking candidates, notably some that target Ethiopian professionals specifically. But these are the exception, not the rule. If you are looking at the list of specialized master's programmes and you do not speak French, you should be honest with yourself: ARES is probably not your path. VLIR-UOS, on the Flemish side, runs its programmes in English and may be a much better fit.

Even for the English-taught courses, you will be living in a French-speaking city. Your landlord, the grocery clerk, the bus driver, the hospital staff — they speak French. ARES expects that you are at minimum willing to learn French for daily life, even if your classroom language is English.